Characters
The novel features a large number of characters, both human and animal. The main protagonists are an ensemble of humans who form the EcoAction team. The main antagonists are a small group who form the Stark Conspiracy. There are also numerous gag characters, who are introduced for the purposes of narrating a humorous tale, and then quickly discarded. These characters are often animals. For example, Dave the dolphin is born, and Iggy the iguana eats a fly, and all die very shortly afterward. Most of the human characters are derided by the narrative for comedic effect and as a vehicle for social commentary.
The animal characters are usually anthropomorphised. The author gives them human names and describes their thoughts and point of view as though the animal were sentient human. Animals are often portrayed as being more intelligent than humans. Their simple lifestyles are compared with human's, particularly to the extent which human consumption impacts the environment. Late in the story, a camel named Walter Culboon (named by a human character after two of the EcoAction characters who die) becomes integral to the infiltration of the Stark base.
Read more about this topic: Stark (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Socialist writers are made of sterner stuff than those who only let their characters steeplechase through trouble in order to come out first in the happy ending of moral uplift.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)